solidity is relative

I mean you spend all this time ranking up two syndicates to learn the story of these two important characters and then...nobody cares. Loid doesn’t comment on it, Mother has no idea, not even a snide remark from [REDACTED] himself.

quick Callisto-5 sketch with the armor combo I was using during the Season of Seraph finale

I think the reason that warframe struggles so much with endgame is because the players have too great of a range in power. You might have heard of “skill floors” and “skill ceilings” in games before, but those exist for power as well. Warframe has an incredibly low power floor, but also an incredibly high power ceiling. There are multiple frames and weapons that can deal enough damage to cause an integer overflow, provided you have the right mods. And that’s kind of a problem.

How do you design an endgame for a game that allows this much freedom with progression? You can design it with the strongest builds in mind, giving enemies inflated hp and armor, but then anyone using a less powerful build calls it a bullet sponge. You can design it for much weaker builds, but then the stronger builds turn it into a cakewalk and don’t feel engaging.

You can’t even get around the problem by making non-stat related mechanics because this IS a stats game. The entire progression path is through mods, weapons, and upgrades. If you make a crucial mechanic that isn’t related to stats, then your previous upgrades are essentially worthless.

This can be most clearly seen through every new system they add that isn’t a normal warframe mod or weapon. Think of operators, necramechs, and archwings. They are essentially “fresh starts” for progression which allows the developers to fine tune the difficulty for a while before it turns into crazy power trips or insanely difficult fights again.

I don’t think there’s any universally good solution to this either. You could address it by reducing the player’s power ceiling , but then people will complain about being nerfed into the ground. You could raise the power floor, but then people will say there’s no meaningful progression. You could avoid “endgame” entirely by constantly adding more side progression, but then people complain about content islands.

tl;dr: min power is too low, max power is too high, what do?